1. The consumer is in control.
“We need to embrace the urgent implications of consumer control.” Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, Procter & Gamble
2. The consumer is sceptical and increasingly resistant to advertising.
“In the US 69 per cent of consumers are interested in products and services that allow them to block, skip or opt out of advertising and marketing messages.â€Â Yanklevich Partners
Johnnie and I spoke at the Market Research Society’s annual bash yesterday, at The Barbican in London. We did an overview of the user-generated world to an audience of about 200 before handing over to Dr Alastair Goode of Duckfoot and Julian Dobinson who heads up Sky Media’s research.Â
Alastair presented the findings of research which shows that ads are more effective when viewed at PVR speed (30 x faster than normal) – if and it’s a big if – people have already seen the advert. The reason is all to do with the efficiency of the subconscious – ‘Blink’ style.Â
There is no doubting Alastair’s credentials or methodology but it’s a difficult one for the industry to digest. For instance, one member of the audience asked if it meant Sky were about to launch ad breaks with 1 second long slots? The proceedings were all chaired by Richard Huntingdon, Head Planner at United London (previously HHCL) who has developed a nasty blogging habit here ;-).
WebSideStory reports that Google is way ahead of its competitors for most used search engine in the UK. Google processes three out of four searches in the UK. With Google accounting for 74.67% of the market, their competition is way behind. With Yahoo at 9.30%, MSN 5.46%, AOL 4.21%, Ask Jeeves 2.28%.
The test was conducted for the month of February, and showed that Google referred an average of 74.67% of all UK visitors to other sites on the web. Supposedly more people think of Google when they think search in the UK, even more than in the US.
WebSideStory used their HBX Analytics technology to provide real time information about the online visitors and customer behavior. HBX Analytics enables you to increase online sales, improve the return of your marketing activities, reduce customer support costs, monetize content and improve advertising sales.
I was asked via email by a reader whether a company’s blog should live at blog.mycompany.com or mycompanyblog.com.
If the blog will get more links by being at an arm’s length from the corporate site, then I’d have it on a totally separate domain.
For example, if a life insurance company had a blog about health and wellness at www.stayinghealthy.com, I would expect that to garner many more links from the blogosphere than one at blog.lifeinsuranceco.com.
This may seem like an oversimplification, since I haven’t discussed the branding implications, but I believe the “link-ability†of the blog is the key ingredient for long-term success with a corporate blog. Everything else to me is peripheral.
Summary: WordPress.com offers free, instant blogging but lacks the full features of the WordPress platform.
A lot of clients are asking me about WordPress and how it stacks up to other blogging platforms like Blogger or Typepad. Only problem is: There are two types of WordPress: WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
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Since my list of WordPress plugins was so well-received, I’ve got another list to share. This time it’s my favorite Firefox extensions…
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The MIT Advertising Lab has posted on how Jacob Nielsen: Eyetracking Study Considers AdSense Blindness.
Nielsen has a workshop coming up that discusses how eyetracking can reveal usability insights. Relevant to bloggers is the conclusion that Is “text-box blindness” may be getting to be as bad as “banner blindness.” This may explain why some are experiencing diminishing click-through rates.
This week sees a marketing approach to the travelling business show, recognized by one and all as Carnival of the Capitalists makes a visit to Sam Decker’s (pictured below left) high quality business and marketing blog known as Decker Marketing.This week’s edition of Carnival of the Capitalists highlights some of the best bloggers writing on the internet today. Blogging topics presented include entrepreneurship, management, market trading, internet commerce, marketing, the national and global economies, and technology.
As you would expect from Decker Marketing, there are many discussions of business, marketing, and leadership. It’s always great to read and discover the many high quality blogs out there in the blogosphere.
We don’t always get to them all, and this edition of Carnival of the Capitalists has introduced many of us to some brand new ones. I have an entry in this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists as well.
My post is titled “Visitor traffic logs: Put them to work for you” where I discuss how visitor logs provide useful information on the activities of your visitors that can helpful in adding fresh content to your site and in improving conversion rates from tire kicker to customer status.
If you wish to submit an entry to next week’s, or any Carnival of the Capitalists edition, e-mail your entries to the new address:
cotcmail -at- gmail -dot- com
You can always use the handy entry form at Gongol.com where all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Talk about making it easy to be included!
Another brand new form for sending entries to all of the internet carnvivals is provided by The Conservative Cat. This is a great one stop entry drop, for all your blog post entries, for every blog carnival.
Note as well that Carnival of the Capitalists. has a new URL at http://thecotc.com/. Be sure to update your links and bookmarks.
If you are searching for new and exciting ways to expand your blog’s readership, you should seriously consider sending an entry to Carnival of the Capitalists.
Merely being included in the company, of the first rate regular Carnival of the Capitalists contributors, will enhance the reputation of your blog.
The extra visitors sent to your blog won’t hurt either! The growth and staying power, of Carnival of the Capitalists, is beginning to catch the attention of people outside the blogging community. Each hosting, brings a fresh assortment of new readers, to the various blogs involved. The visitors aren’t only bloggers anymore.
Readership is expanding to include the mainstream media, various government and private organizations, many businesses, and other interested people from beyond the blogging community. Many people are introduced to some tremendous blogs that they might otherwise have missed.
Next week’s Carnival of the Capitalists will be at Rob May’s and Jay Solo’s carnival partner business news blog known as Jotzel. In the meantime, click that mouse over to the Decker Marketing hosting of Carnival of the Capitalists.
If the great posted entries don’t convince you to click, or the possibility of finding some brand new blogs to read doesn’t do it, then Carnival of the Capitalists certainly will offer some ideas to get some software in your hardware. (groan)
 With Microsoft Corp. saying that it may wait until April 11 to patch a critical vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser, security vendor eEye Digital Security has released what it calls a “temporary” patch to address the problem. The bug, which concerns the way IE processes Web pages using the createTextRange() method, is now being exploited by attackers on hundreds of malicious Web sites (see “Update: Microsoft tests fix for IE bug as exploits appear”). Users who might be tricked into visiting these Web sites could have unauthorized software installed on their computers, security experts warn.Though Microsoft has described these attacks as “limited” in scope, the problem is being taken seriously by the software maker because the exploits can be used to seize control of a user’s machine.
“We’re working day and night on development of a cumulative security update for Internet Explorer that addresses the vulnerability,” wrote Stephen Toulouse, head of Microsoft’s Security Response Center, in a Saturday blog posting.
That patch is expected to be released as part of an April 11 security update, although the software could come earlier if the threat grows, Toulouse said.
The possibility that it could be more than two weeks before this bug is fixed prompted eEye to release the patch, said Marc Maiffret, the security company’s chief hacking officer. “That’s a long time to leave several million Windows users without any sort of protection.”
Microsoft says that users can avoid the attack by disabling Active Scripting in their browsers, but this is not a viable option for the many users who use sites that employ scripting, Maiffret said.
EEye’s patch, which is available free of charge, will automatically remove itself when Microsoft’s official patch is delivered.
Determina Inc. released a second IE patch addressing the same problem. That patch is also available free.
This not the first time security researchers have rushed to patch IE ahead of Microsoft. In late December, Ilfak Guilfanov, a developer at Liege, Belgium-based DataRescue SA, wrote a widely distributed patch that fixed a similarly critical bug in Internet Explorer.
Internet company Lycos, a wholly owned subsidiary of Daum Communications of South Korea, has announced the launch of Lycos Phone, a VoIP soft-phone application powered by Globe7.
Lycos now offers a free downloadable white label VoIP platform, in partnership with Globe7. With Lycos Phone, users can make free calls from PC to PC. They can also make free PC to PC video calls and receive unlimited free incoming calls from any landline or mobile phone from around the world. Users also receive 100 free minutes of PC to landline and PC to mobile phone calls and can earn additional free minutes through various promotional offers.
Lycos claims to be the first to introduce a VoIP system with full multimedia support for music and video-on-demand content. The Lycos Phone platform provides free video-on-demand access to more than 300 movie trailers, business news, world sports and other content. Users can access the video or music content without interrupting phone or chat services in the application.
Lycos Phone offers a free US phone number, free fax and free voicemail to e-mail.
Currently, Globe7 supports Windows 2000 and XP systems. Future enhancements will support Linux, Mac OS, Palm OS and Pocket PC.